At random 6/22

Sunday, June 22, 2003

In elementary school we're all taught to revere the idea of the American "minute man," that brave young man with his musket in his hands, watching intently for the redcoats. This is the figure that sculptor Daniel Chester French immortalized in the statue on the battlefield of Concord, Massachusetts. The lone soldier is an emblem for any number of organizations and businesses, including one mammoth insurance company. In more recent times, the idea of the small, ever-alert, armed militia has become attractive to right-wing extremists, whose fear of the government in Washington may become so strong some day that armed resistance may become inevitable. At that point, Charlton Heston's words, to the effect that the Second Amendment is the most important part of our constitution, will be justified, and we -- all of us, young and old, rich and poor -- will be defending ourselves from our regular army, sent to stamp out resistance. That's the myth. What's the reality? In fact, there was no democratic inclusiveness about our militia. There were no militia in Pennsylvania because of its Quaker population, and of course conscientious objectors did not join. You were exempt if you were going to college. If you were socially prominent you were exempt, if you payed for the privilege. Even John Adams, who was of military age during the French and Indian War, didn't even consider joining the militia. (Maybe he thought he had bigger fish to fry.) Pulitzer-prize-winning historian Garry Wills has this to say about the American-militia myth: "There was a drastic shortage of guns," he writes in his fascinating "A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government" (1999). Furthermore, "there is overwhelming evidence that a majority of males did not own usable guns." Most had not even fired one. Then, how in the world did they get meat to eat? They had cows and pigs for that. In the French and Indian War of the 1750's, some two hundred Virginia militiamen arrived at the front -- with a grand total of eighty muskets. The Americans, for the most part, used European firearms, and when they broke, American blacksmiths couldn't fix them. American muskets were made of iron and were specially susceptible to rust. Only when Samuel Colt began operations did Americans have an ample supply of usable firearms. (Today, there's an average of three firearms for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.) "As an institution," writes historian Don Higginbotham, "the militia proved deficient. The law-making bodies of the colony-states were never able to bring these military organizations up to meeting their responsibilities . . . When required to stay for extended lengths of time in the field far from home, when mixed closely with sizable bodies of Continentals, and when performing against redcoats in open combat, the militia were at their worst. Nothing in their modest training, not to mention their normally deficient equipment and supplies, prepared them for these duties." That's probably the reason that the desertion rate among the militiamen was so high -- 20 percent, or 1 in 5. Were the militias ever effective? Yes. In the Revolutionary War, militias put down slave revolts and Indian uprisings. Otherwise, the virtuous and patriotic militias are pretty much a myth. How do these myths get started anyway? For one thing, America was a new country in the 1750's, and needed heroes.

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